Men are free. Beyond the world's confines they range. They will not only what the Song might offer, but shift the Song. Small changes, but time grows them.

Such freedom ages them, wearing away flesh and time. Men aren't elven bodies, nor even those that once istari were. Their deaths are substantial, their lives uncertain.

And he – he's one with them, a mad and deadly note, relentlessly reborn. But mortal freedom is the solvent to all substance that wears on him, wears in him. The alchemy of Ages and untold lives invest him – to what end, none knows...